Nine Lectures on Bees

Schmidt Number: S-5506

On-line since: 15th December, 2009

(Questions
were asked as to the affinity between bees and flowers which unites them
so closely; also, what honey should be, and is, in relation to mail.

The question
of the laying of eggs when the Queen is not fecundated was again raised,
as in a normal hive there are three kinds of eggs: queen-eggs, worker-eggs
and drone-eggs).

DR.
STEINER:

Very well, we
will discuss these things once more in today's lecture. It is like this:
we have first the fertilisation of the Queen during the nuptial flight.
The Queen is then fecundated. Then we have to consider the time which
elapses between the laying of the eggs until the insect is completely
matured, till the bee is there. With the Queen this period is sixteen
days, with the worker-bee twenty-one — twenty-two days, and in
the case of the drone twenty-two — twenty-four days. We have
then to begin with these three types; they differ from one another in
so far as they mature during differing periods of time. What lies at
the root of this? When a bee develops as a Queen it is due to the
special feeding it has been given; the Queen larva are differently
fed so that growth is accelerated. Now the bees are creatures of the
Sun, and the Sun needs approximately the same time to revolve once
upon its own axis as the worker-bee needs to come to maturity. The
Queen does not wait in her development till the Sun has quite
completed this revolution, and for this reason her whole development
remains entirely within the influence of the Sun. Thereby she becomes
a creature capable of laying eggs; all that is connected with a
capacity to lay eggs is under the influence of the Sun, and indeed,
of the whole cosmos also. The moment the feeding is such that
development proceeds at the rate of the worker-bee, which is that of
almost a complete revolution of the Sun, the nearer the bee
approaches the influence of the earth-evolution. The farther the Sun
moves, the more the bee comes under the influences of the earth. The
worker-bee is indeed largely a creature of the Sun, but already
somewhat of an earthly creature. But the drone which develops during
a longer period than is necessary for a complete revolution of the
Sun, becomes a creature wholly of the earth. It withdraws itself from
the influence of the Sun.

We have then
this trinity; we have the Queen, the worker-bees, in which there are
still super-earthly forces, and we have the drones which have no longer
anything to do with the Sun, but are fully creatures of the earth.
All else that happens occurs no longer under the influence of the
earth, with the one exception of the actual fecundation of the
Queen.

Now this is
the remarkable point. Just consider this nuptial flight of the Queen.
The lower animals dislike fecundation, they seek to avoid it. This is
everywhere in evidence. Thus the flight of the Queen is an escape
towards the Sun, and no fecundation can take place when the day is
dull. The drones who try to bring an earthly element into the Sun
element must even wrestle in the air, and the weaker ones are left
behind. Only the very strongest can fly as high as the Queen, and
fertilise her. But even after this has taken place it is not all the
eggs that are fertilised, but only a portion of them, and these can
become Queens or worker-bees; the remaining portion that are
unfertilised within the body of the Queen become drones. When the
Queen is not fecundated then only drones can emerge, when she is
fecundated, Queens, worker-bees and drones can emerge, because the
seed is fertilised and the heavenly has made contact with the
earthly. Thus even when there are worker-bees and drones, the latter
still owe their origin to a longer exposure to earthly influences,
because no fertilisation has in their case taken place, and they must
therefore be all the more exposed to earthly influences if they are
to become fitted for life; they must be fed for a longer period of
time.

QUESTION:

Some years ago,
I was told that if anyone has rheumatism and gets stung by a bee or a wasp,
the rheumatism will get better.

DR.
STEINER:

This touches
upon a question which was perhaps not fully considered last Monday. Herr
Müller then told us of a man who evidently had some slight
affection of the heart, and who collapsed on being stung by a
bee.

HERR
MÜLLER:

The doctor
advised him to give up bee-keeping, as otherwise it might be the death
of him.

DR.
STEINER:

Disease of the
heart is a sign that the ego-organisation is not functioning rightly. You
have already heard something of these things in former lectures. You will
remember that we distinguished four different parts of a man; first
of all, the ordinary physical body, which we can touch, secondly the
etheric body, thirdly the astral body, and fourthly the
ego-organisation.

This
ego-organisation is active in the blood; actually, it
brings the blood into movement, and in accordance with the
movement of the blood, the heart beats. In text books you will always
find the facts quite falsely stated, for it is represented as though
the heart were a kind of pump, and that this pumping of the heart
sends the blood all over the body. This is nonsense, because it is in
reality the blood which is brought into motion by the
ego-organisation, and moves throughout the body. If anyone asserts
that it is the heart that drives the blood, then he must equally
assert that if he has a turbine, it is the turbine that sets the
water in motion, though everyone knows that it is the water that
drives the turbine. Man has the same kind of points of resistance in
his heart; the blood comes up against them and sets the heart in
motion; thus it is that the ego-organisation works directly in the
circulation of the blood.

Now it is
actually the case that this ego-organisation is in a mysterious way present
in the poison of the bee; it is a similar force to the force that circulates
in your blood that is present in the bee-poison. It is of great
interest that the bee should have need of this poison within her. The
bee does not merely need it in order to be able to sting; that is
merely incidental. The bee needs the poison throughout its whole
organism, for it must have the same force of circulation that man has
in his blood.

The colony of
bees, as I told you, is like an entire man. Now consider, you get some of
this bee-poison into your body, that is, into your blood, for any poison
entering the body goes immediately into the blood. You are, let us
say, a normal man, your blood will come more into motion, and
inflammation may follow, but your heart can bear it. If however, a
man has some disease of the heart, and his ego-organisation is made
stronger by the poison, then this affects the weak heart, and the
result may be that the man faints, or may even die. This explains the
case mentioned by Herr Müller.

The remarkable
thing is this; that substances that can make a man ill or even kill him,
can also cure him. This is one of the great responsibilities one has in
the preparation of medicines, for there are no real remedies which,
if wrongly applied, cannot cause the same illnesses which they can
also cure.

What then
actually happens when a fainting fit or even death results from the sting
of a bee?

You see, when
a man faints, then his astral body, and more especially his ego-organisation,
has withdrawn from the body as happens in sleep, only in sleep this
happens in a normal way, and in a swoon in abnormal way. In a swoon,
or fainting fit, the astral body does not withdraw completely
as in sleep, it gets stuck fast, and when a man has a weak
ego-organisation, he cannot bring it back again. One has to shake
him, wake him up, rouse him out of his faintness by making him
breathe more strongly by certain movements. You know how in these
cases, one has to take the man's arms, cross them over on his breast,
put them back, then again bring them forward and so on, and this
artificial breathing really always means that one is trying to bring
the ego-organisation back into the body in the right way.

And now let us
suppose someone is suffering from rheumatism, or perhaps gout, or other
deposits in the body; then one must try to strengthen the
ego-organisation. Why do people have gout or rheumatism? Because the
ego-organisation is too weak and cannot bring the blood into the
right movement. The blood must be made to move more quickly. When the
blood is not in the right state, when for instance, it flows too
slowly, minute crystals are precipitated everywhere, and pass into
the neighbourhood of the blood-vessels. These minute crystals consist
of uric acid, and they go all over the body, and cause gout or
rheumatism — the ego-organisation is too weak.

If I now give
this man the right dose of bee or wasp poison, his ego-organisation is
strengthened; only one must not give too much, or the
ego-organisation might not be able to hold its own. But if one gives
just enough to strengthen the ego one can then find a very good
remedy prepared from the bee or wasp poison; only one must combine it
with some other substance. These things are done. For instance, the
old Tartarus remedy is manufactured in a similar way, though from
different substances.

Remedies can
always be prepared from poisonous substances, as in this case for the
strengthening of the ego-organisation, but in applying them it is
necessary to know all about the particular patient. For example,
someone has gout or rheumatism; the first question must be — is
his heart sound? that is, does it function well under the influence
of the blood-circulation? If this is the case, he can be cured with
bee or wasp poison. If the heart is not sound (but here one must
distinguish between a nervous heart trouble, where it is less
harmful) but if you have a patient with a serious heart disease, when
the trouble is due to a valvular disease, then one must be very
careful in the use of this remedy. Bee or wasp poison acts very
powerfully on the cardiac valve, and when this is diseased these
remedies cannot sometimes be made use of at all. This is why it is so
dangerous to speak in a general way of some medicine or another as a
cure for this or that illness. But one is entitled to say
— I make a certain preparation, a remedy; I put wasp or bee
poison into it (we actually have such a remedy) combining it with
some binding substance, some gelatinous or other vegetable binding
substance, which is then put into an ampoule and injected,
just as the sting of the bee is injected, only the re-action from the
bee sting is much stronger. One can prepare this remedy, and can call
it a cure for rheumatism.

But even so,
this is not the only anxiety one has, for one has first of all to
discover whether the patient's general state of health can well bear
the remedy; medicaments which enter deeply into the body must only be
given when one has most thoroughly examined the patient's whole state
of health. For this reason such remedies as enter deeply into the
body must only he administered when one has thoroughly examined
the patient's state of health.

When one hears
of all manner of remedies such as are commonly advertised as cures for one
thing or another, they are usually more or less harmless, and may be
of use. There are many of these remedies to be bought, and one may
agree that this is so, even when they have unpleasant results. Cures
very frequently have unpleasant consequences, and the patient usually
has to recover from the remedy which has cured him!

If we have some
fine strong fellow who has rheumatism, it is as a rule, not true rheumatism,
but a gouty condition, and then, as Mr. Burle said, “a few
bee-stings can affect him very favourably.” He can be cured
because he is able to stand the reaction. It is usually so, that a
normal man who suffers from rheumatism, and is given the correct dose
of bee-poison, can take this remedy well and be cured by it. On the
other hand, a bee-sting may cause such severe inflammation that this
must first be reduced and the poison, as far as possible, removed, in
which case not very much will remain for curing the rheumatism. In
the case of a normal man, it will very probably happen that not
sufficient will remain over to cure the rheumatism.

But now let us
consider the following case. Rheumatism can also come about in this way. A
man is perhaps not a very hard worker, and has a very good appetite. Well,
generally speaking, a man will have quite a good sound heart if he
does not work too much and eats heartily, until the whole situation
begins to be rather doubtful.

The heart is an
organ with extraordinary powers of resistance, it can hardly be seriously
damaged unless there is some hereditary tendency, or if it has been
injured in youth; the heart can only be injured after many years. But
a man who is a heavy eater often takes a good deal of alcohol with
his meals, then the ego-organisation is over-stimulated, and the
circulation of the blood becomes too violent; the heart can no longer
keep pace with its beats. Poison, uric acid, is deposited all over
him; the heart may still be strong for quite a long time, but already
gout and rheumatism are lurking everywhere. Under these conditions, a
bee-sting may render him extraordinarily good service.

HERR
BURLE:

I do not know
whether there was a trace of alcoholism about this man I mentioned.

DR.
STEINER:

You mean you
made no inquiries? You see, gentlemen, when one has such remedies as
bee-poison, which is a very powerful one, then one must be quite sure
that most careful attention is given to the patient's whole state of
health.

HERR
MÜLLER stated that he got an attack of
rheumatism by catching cold; he treated it with exposure to the Sun,
after which it disappeared. This summer he had it again slightly. He
also believed that one could be cured by bee-stings, but one unlucky
day he was badly stung on both legs, and had about thirty-two stings.
The only ill effect was that for a week he was all colours of the
rainbow. Swelling did not always follow; human bodies are very
differently constituted. As already stated, one man may die of a
bee-sting, while another may get as many as sixty without his heart
beating any faster for it. One man has more resistance than
another.

DR.
STEINER:

When you got
so many stings, was it after you had been working many years with bees?

HERR
MÜLLER:

Many years.

DR.
STEINER:

Probably you no
longer remember the first time you were stung. After the first time one gets
to feel it either more, or less. The man of whom you told us, was no
doubt, stung for the first time. When one has once had a poison in
one's body, that is, in the blood, one gets more and more able to
cope with it, one gets increasingly immune, as it is called. When
someone is stung a hit at the beginning of his bee-keeping, and is
otherwise a man with a healthy heart, then the poison so works on him
that he becomes less and less sensitive to it. If one knows one is
strong and healthy, one can even let oneself be stung once or twice
in order that one can be stung afterwards. Rainbow colours show that
the poison only affects the skin; the blood has become immune. This
does not depend only on the organisation, but on what has been
previously introduced into the blood. I am surprised that the doctor
who saw this man of whom you told us, did not tell him that the
second time it would not be so bad, and the third time he would be
immune. But perhaps his heart was so bad he could not safely have
taken this risk. That also has to be considered.

And indeed today
it is a dangerous affair, because the doctors having once got hold of such
things, now think that every bee-master should be inoculated before he
starts bee-keeping.

When men go to
war they are inoculated with all sorts of poisons, a thing not at all to
be recommended, for the blood is then very greatly injured. The blood
always deteriorates somewhat when such things are put into it.
After a time it recovers its balance, the blood becomes healthy
again, but is protected against any fresh poison of the same
nature.

HERR
MÜLLER:

About the drones
and the different kinds of eggs, Dr. Steiner has said so much, but one
point is perhaps not familiar to him. When one has reason to believe the
colony to be healthy, there may be times when the Queen is inferior,
or is too old, and all the eggs she lays turn out drones. After many
years of experience he is convinced that the Queen, when not a good
one or too old, is still capable of laying eggs, some of which are
good, but the majority will produce only drones.

Then about
honey; how the bee actually makes the honey, and whether the bee-keeper
should not help by sugar-feeding. From what had been said here, it would
seem that the bee-keeper is on no account to use sugar; it seems that
anyone who feeds his bees with sugar will get his name on the black
list. It is true that one can have bad experiences with feeding
foreign honey.

DR.
STEINER:

Naturally,
it is quite right to say that one does not get the same product if sugar
is fed artificially. If anyone likes taking sugar with honey he can add
some for himself. Just as one does not water the wine you offer people on
the ground that people should not drink it so strong, one offers what
is printed on the label. The best thing in regard to honey is
reciprocal control by the bee-keepers, because they best understand
the whole question.

With regard
to the drones, I should like to say this. One may certainly suspect that
the Queen is not properly fertilised; too many drones come out. If one does
not wish to leave the matter to the bees to settle, something can be done
by means of special feeding, (these experiments have been made) the
brood then emerges earlier, i.e., after twenty —
twenty-two days, instead of twenty-three — twenty-four days,
The drones then appear as somewhat drowsy, but still approximately
similar to worker bees. One cannot certainly continue this for long;
it is merely an example of the effects of the time-periods.

Such things
are however, not done in practical bee-keeping theoretically, it can
certainly be stated that a very great deal depends on the feeding, and
it is undeniable that an irregularly egg-laying bee can be developed from
a worker-bee, though it will certainly not be a real Queen. These
things all go to show how readily transformable these creatures are,
but such matters have no great value in practical bee-keeping.

HERR
MÜLLER:

One calls these
“laying workers;” it is an illness in the colony.

DR.
STEINER:

In practical
bee-keeping it is of no great importance, but by special feeding, the colony
is able to make an egg-laying bee out of an ordinary worker-bee. It is a
kind of illness. The colony is a unity in itself, and the colony is then
ill. If you take a goose and overfeed it till the liver is
over-developed, then the whole organism is ill. If a worker-bee
becomes a layer of eggs, it is an over-developed worker-bee, but the
whole colony must then be regarded as ill.

Perhaps some
other questions may occur to you later, we can then return to them.
Meanwhile I will add a few words in reply to the question asked by
Herr Dollinger.

One can clearly
distinguish those insects that in the wider sense are bee-like, the bees,
wasps, and ants. These small creatures are related to one another, and I
have already told you the interesting story of the gall-wasps which
deposit their eggs in trees and similar places. I explained further
how a kind of inner preparation of honey takes place through these
wasps. There are also other kinds of wasps beside these gall-wasps,
which more closely resemble the bees as they make a kind of
honey-comb. There is, for example, an interesting wasp which
builds in the following way: when it finds a rather stiff leaf on
some branch, it fetches small particles which it bites off from the
bark of neighbouring trees, or some similar substance; these it
permeates with its saliva, and then proceeds to build a number of
small stalks which it attaches to the leaf. When it has completed
these attachments the wasp goes on working, mixing these substances
with saliva and building on to these stalks something very similar to
the single cell of the honey-comb. On a closer inspection of this
substance it is, however, seen to be different. Honey-comb, as you
know, is made of wax, but when you take a piece of this wasp-comb it
has a greyish colour, it is very much like what we manufacture as
paper. It is actually a kind of paper-pulp. Then second, third,
fourth pieces are added and hung up there.

Diagram 15Click image for large view

When eggs have
been deposited in these cells, they are covered over, but during the
time of laying, the wasp in a most curious way, makes a kind of loop
out of its paper,
(Diagram 15)
and then again a kind of covering with
an opening at one side for a flight hole, so that the wasps can go in
and out and attend to these little cells, Then more rows of cells are
added, covered in, again a loop, a cover and a flight hole, and
so on, till there may be quite a long cone, like a fir-cone. The
wasps build themselves this cone-like structure out of paper, and in
its separate parts it is similar to the brood nest of the bees. Other
wasp nests are, as you know, covered in with a kind of skin, and have
many and varied forms.

Just think what
is happening here. If you ask me what the bee does in order to build its
waxen cells, then I must say that the bee gathers what is needed from
the flowers, from flowering plants, and what is of a similar nature
from trees, but not concerning itself at all with the bark, or woody
substances. The bee gathers only what is of the nature of the
blossom, or more rarely what is leaf-like in its nature. The only
time when such higher insects as the bees go to what is not of the
nature of the blossom (to woody parts and such-like they do not go)
is when they go after a substance that at certain times seems to be
extremely tasty to them. The bees certainly do this much less than
the wasps, and most especially the ants. Though the ants and wasps
make use of what is lignified for their nests, they greatly relish
the juices that are exuded primarily by the aphids:. This is really
most interesting. The harder the substances used by these creatures
for their structures, the more do they relish not only the nectar
that is within the blossom, but something that is upon the blossom or
leaf, namely, the aphis. These are really noble creatures, (forgive
me if I now use the language of the ants, in human speech I could not
say the same), the aphis is for the ant a noble animal. It is
absolutely all blossom; it is really the finest honey in the world.
The wasps also have a discriminating taste for the aphis. But when we
come to the ants, which are not able to build the same kind of nest
as the wasps, they must set to work quite differently. The ant makes
heaps of earth, and these heaps have many passages within them, a
whole labyrinth of passages along which the ants then carry all they
need in the way of harder substances from the bark or rind of trees.
Above all, the ants like the dead parts of wood, and these materials
they use to continue their building, piling it up with particles of
soil. They chiefly visit the stumps of trees that have been cut down,
selecting what they need from the hardened core and carrying it away
for their nests.

Thus the ants use
the very hardest substances, and cannot elaborate their building as far as
a cellular structure. You see, the bees make use of the substances that
are within the plants; with these they build their waxen cells, and
are thus still dependent on the juices of the blossom for their food,
on pollen for instance, and the juice-like substances in the blossom.
In the case of the wasps, it is already a harder material that they
need for building their cells, but it is at the same time, thinner
and more brittle than honey-comb, though as a substance it is
harder.

A wasp may have
a fine taste for aphis, but it nevertheless feeds also, in bee-fashion,
on what is contained in the plants. The ants mostly make use of such
hard material that they can only make tunnels into the earth,
constructing little caves without any combs or cells. They are most
especially fond of the aphis; they even capture them and carry them
away to their dwellings; one can find them there in the ant heaps. It
is really most interesting. When you go into a village you see a row
of houses, and behind them the cow-sheds where the milking cows are;
the ants have just the same plan. Throughout the ant heap you will
find little dwellings where the aphis are placed, for they are the
milch-cows of the ants. It is only all on a minute scale, for there
you will find little stalls, and the aphis are the cows. The ants go
to them and stroke them with their antennæ; this is extremely
pleasant to the aphis, and they exude their juice which the ants now
absorb. In this juice of the aphis the ant receives the most vital
element of its food, for the aphis gives up this juice when it is
milked by the ant. It is really just like a cow, only the cow must be
stroked much harder. The aphis are picked off the plants by the ants,
and are well cared for, so that we really must say it is quite
splendid for these little creatures that there should be an ant hill
in the neighbourhood, and that they should be carried off by the ants
and made use of in their little cow-stalls. In the wise arrangements
of Nature quite a little cow market in aphis is carried on by the ants.

Thus you see,
gentlemen, that the ants which make use of hard substances only for their
dwellings, are no longer able to be satisfied with the pure saps of
the plants for their food; they must take as food what the sap of the
plant has already given to the animal. So one must say: with the bees
the pure juices of the flowers suffice for food; the wasps need both
the flower saps and the animal saps, hence their harder shell
structure. In the case of the ants their actual food is animal sap
only; hence there is no construction of cells at all. The ant has no
longer the power to build cells. Even when it takes something from
the flowers it still needs this substance from the little cow-stalls,
otherwise it cannot live.

You see how
interesting are the relationships that exist between the flowers and these
creatures. The bees must use the pure saps of the flowers; the wasps, and
more especially the ants, must first allow these flower juices to pass
through the animal before it can serve them as nourishment. As a
result of this, they are able in the building of their house, to use
what is no longer the sap of the plant. There is really a very great
difference between the waxen honey-comb of the bee, the paper nest of
the wasp, and the structure made by the ants which can only be made
from outside material, and cannot be carried to the stage of the
cell. For this reason their food must be so entirely different.

On Saturday
I must go to Schaffhausen, and there will be no lecture; I will let you
know when the next one will take place.